It may look like something you’d chuck
on the barbecue without a second thought, but this round of meat costs a
very beefy £250,000 — as the world’s first test-tube burger.

After
the patty was lightly fried in a little butter and sunflower oil
yesterday, the two volunteers chosen to taste it in front of a live
audience were hardly effusive, though.

‘I
was expecting the texture to be more soft,’ said Austrian food
researcher Hanni Rutzler, taking 27 chews before being able to swallow a
mouthful. ‘It’s close to meat — it’s not that juicy.’

The second volunteer, food writer Josh Schonwald added: ‘The absence is the fat. But the bite feels like a conventional hamburger. What was conspicuously different was flavour.’

Scroll down to watch the taste test...

The world's first test-tube burger, made from lab-grown meat, (pictured) has been cooked and eaten in London today. The 142g patty was developed by Professor Mark Post (pictured) of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. It cost £250,000 to produce and is made from 20,000 strips of meat grown from cow stem cells

The ‘cultured beef’ takes three months
to grow in a laboratory, using cells from a living cow.

Its creator,
Dutch scientist Mark Post, claims it could revolutionise the food
industry and help save the planet. He believes that artificial meat
products could be sold in supermarkets within a decade.

After tasting his invention yesterday,
he said: ‘I think it’s a very good start — it proved that we can do
this, that we can make it. We are basically catering towards letting
beef-eaters eat beef in an environmentally ethical way.’

Next, the cells are incubated in a
nutrient ‘broth’ until they multiply many times over, creating a sticky
tissue. This is then bulked up through the laboratory equivalent of
exercise — it is anchored to Velcro and stretched.

Finally, 20,000 strips of the meat are
minced and mixed with salt, breadcrumbs, egg powder and natural red
colourants to form an edible patty.

The technology has already been proven on an individual scale. Last year, Mark Post, a professor of tissue engineering at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, presented the first lab-grown hamburger

Appetising? The meat had red beetroot juice and saffron added to provide an authentic beef colouring. Despite these ingredients, taster Ms Ruetzler said it could have done with some salt and pepper

Professor Post has spent seven years trying to
turn stem cells into meat, and was first successful with mouse burgers.

He then tried to grow pork — producing strips with the rubbery texture
of squid or scallops — before settling on beef.

His technique, he says, can be used
to recreate the flesh of most animals, including rare species such as
tigers or pandas, although demand may be questionable.

WHO IS SERGEY BRIN?

It has just been revealed that Sergey Brin is one of the financial backers of the test-tube burger.

Mr Brin is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google.

Together with Page, he owns 16 per cent of the internet search giant.

His personal wealth is estimated to be £13.2bn in 2012.

He and Page previously invested in a large offshore
wind farm in 2010 and a self-driving car in a bid to reduce road
accidents via Google's philanthropic arm.

It is believed that Mr Brin invested £215,000in the creation of the burger.

Mr Brin has also invested in Space Adventures - the private space tourism company that is selling £65 million trips to the Moon.

He
has also previously worked with film director James Cameron to
investigate mining asteroids and has an interest in solving the world’s
energy and climate problems.

Before the burger was cooked, he said: 'What we are going to
attempt is important because I hope it will show cultured beef has the
answers to major problems that the world faces.

'Our burger is made from muscle cells
taken from a cow.

'We haven’t altered them in any way. For it to succeed
it has to look, feel and hopefully taste like the real thing.'

Professor Post was confident he could produce a burger that was almost indistinguishable from one made from a slaughtered animal.

And perhaps he wasn't far off. After taking a mouthful, taster Ms Ruetzler said: 'I was expecting the texture to be more soft... I know there is no fat in it so I didn't know how juicy it would be.

'It's close to meat. It's not that juicy. The consistency is perfect (but) I miss salt and pepper!'

Professor Post pointed out that livestock farming is becoming unsustainable, with demand for meat rocketing around the world.

Unveiling the research last year at a
science meeting in Vancouver, Canada, he said: 'Meat demand is going to
double in the next 40 years. Right now we are using 70% of all our
agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock.

'You can easily
calculate that we need alternatives.'

The 'artificial' meat is produced using a complex process - in effect turning a mere dish of stem cells into a burger that can be grilled or fried.

First the stem cells are cultivated in a nutrient broth, allowing them to proliferate 30-fold.

Next they are combined with an
elastic collagen and attached to Velcro 'anchor points' in a culture
dish. Between the anchor points, the cells 'self-organise' into chunks of
muscle.

Electrical stimulation is then used
to make the muscle strips contract and 'bulk up' - the laboratory
equivalent of working out in a gym.

Samples of the in-vitro meat, or cultured meat grown in a laboratory at the University of Maastricht. Other non-meat ingredients include salt, egg powder, and breadcrumbs. Red beetroot juice and saffron are added to provide authentic beef colouring

Finally the thousands of beef strips
are minced up, together with 200 pieces of lab-grown animal fat, and
moulded into a patty. Around 20,000 meat strands are needed to make one
5oz (142g) burger.

REACTION TO THE STEM CELL BURGER

Jaap Korteweg, The Vegetarian Butcher said: 'From our perspective, the stem cell burger is an interesting idea but is still powered by "fuels" from living animals.

'Only when it’s possible to grow stem cells on plant based materials it could be worthwhile to invest time and money in this development. Now it’s still simply a detour.'

Dr Iain Brassington, bioethicist, Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, University of Manchester, said: 'While the sight of someone eating a very expensive burger is clearly something of a publicity stunt, the underlying idea behind laboratory-grown meat is sound.

'The research is highly laudable, because what it promises is so desirable.'

A major advantage of test-tube meat
is that it can be customised for health, for instance by boosting levels
of polyunsaturated fats, said Professor Post.

Before the taste demonstration Professor Post was asked if he would feed lab-grown beef to his children.

He said: 'I ate it myself a couple of times without any hesitation whatsoever.

'Now a couple of people are going to taste it and my kids are jealous. I'd be very comfortable for them to taste it.'

Manufacturing steaks instead of
minced meat presents a much greater technical challenge, requiring some
kind of blood vessel system to carry nutrients and oxygen to the centre
of the tissue, he added. Making artificial chicken or fish from stem
cells might be easier.

Dr Neil Stephens, a sociologist based at Cardiff University who has studied test tube meat, told AFP that the project was an attempt to spark a debate about an issue that many in the field believe is still not taken seriously enough.

He said that the developers want to demonstrate to the world that in-vitro meat is viable, and that it's something to be taken seriously.

'What will be interesting is, in the coming weeks, watching the response to see how many people are convinced by the technology,' he added.

The animal welfare organisation Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has welcomed the research.

Dutch scientist Professor Mark Post examines samples of in-vitro meat grown in his lab. In-vitro meat or cultured meat is an animal flesh product that has never been part of a complete, living animal

A spokesman said: 'One day you will
be able to eat meat with ethical impunity. In-vitro technology will
spell the end of lorries full of cows and chickens, abattoirs and
factory farming. It will reduce carbon emissions, conserve water and
make the food supply safer.

'Lab-grown meat will provide people
who were addicted from childhood to the saturated fat in flesh with the
‘methadone’ for their habit.'

The Food Standards Agency said: 'As the competent authority for novel foods in the UK, the Food Standards Agency is closely following emerging technologies and developments concerning novel protein sources as food.

'In-vitro' or cultured meat is not yet commercially viable, but the technology used to produce cultured meat could be advanced enough for trials to take place.

'Any novel food, or food produced using a novel production process, must undergo a stringent and independent safety assessment before it is placed on the market.

'Anyone seeking approval of an in-vitro meat product would have to provide a dossier of evidence to show that the product is safe, nutritionally equivalent to existing meat products, and will not mislead the consumer.

'This would be evaluated under the EU regulation for novel foods, prior to a decision on authorisation. There have been no such applications to date.'